D&C 95 and the Word "Considered" in Verse 3

Read the rebuke in D&C 95 slowly and look for what the Saints are accused of. Nobody in the chapter is called a rebel. The temple isn't argued with, and there's no rival building anywhere in sight. The charge in verse 3 is that they "have not considered" the commandment, and I'd guess most readers' eyes slide right past that verb on the way to "very grievous sin."

The Lord had asked for a house in Kirtland twice before this. The first time was in the revelation we now have as D&C 88 (late December 1832). The second was on May 6, 1833, in the revelation I wrote about five days ago in D&C 94. This one is dated June 1, a little over five months after the first request. A committee had been named in May (Hyrum Smith, Jared Carter and Reynolds Cahoon), and as far as I can tell it was still a committee.

For ye have sinned against me a very grievous sin, in that ye have not considered the great commandment in all things, that I have given unto you concerning the building of mine house;

Doctrine and Covenants 95:3

What does "not considered" mean here?

My father spent his career as a civil engineer for UDOT, and one summer when I was home from BYU he told me about a culvert. It was a pipe under a state road east of Morgan, and every spring the maintenance crew filled the dip above it with fresh asphalt because the pipe underneath had started to collapse. The replacement had been designed once and then designed again after the first drawings went stale. It was funded in one budget cycle and unfunded in the next, when a bridge deck somewhere needed the money more.

Dad said it was on the list for nine years.

I asked him who kept voting it down, and he looked at me as if I'd asked who was voting against gravity. "Nobody," he said, "everybody agreed with it, it was just always second."

Then one August a cloudburst came down the drainage above it and took forty feet of the road, and the culvert was rebuilt in under three weeks with money that turned up in an afternoon. Dad told that part flat, like weather.

I hear in "not considered" a word a little stronger than forgot and well short of defied. The Saints had the commandment and believed it, and it never got to the front of anyone's day. The chapter doesn't say what kept them busy, so I won't invent a list. Kirtland in 1833 was crowded and poor and short of nearly everything, and the excuses were probably decent ones. The revelation doesn't argue with them.

Why does the chastening come before the command?

Verse 1 opens with love: "whom I love I also chasten that their sins may be forgiven, for with the chastisement I prepare a way for their deliverance in all things out of temptation." Verse 2 says they "must needs be chastened and stand rebuked." Then verse 11 gives the commandment again: "it is my will that you should build a house."

I keep looking for new instruction in verse 11 and finding the same request as December. What's new is the six verses of correction in front of it, and I can only guess that a request carries more weight when it arrives after a rebuke than it did the first time around.

Verses 11 and 12 make the promise conditional, and I don't want to soften that. "If you keep my commandments you shall have power to build it." If they don't, "the love of the Father shall not continue with you, therefore you shall walk in darkness." That is a hard sentence, and what makes it bearable is back in verse 1, where the chastening is the way out being prepared.

Walking in darkness at noon-day

Verses 5 and 6 are the ones I'd skip if I were teaching this chapter in a hurry. The Lord says many have been ordained and called "but few of them are chosen," and that those who aren't chosen "have sinned a very grievous sin, in that they are walking in darkness at noon-day."

Noon is when nobody can say they couldn't see.

The sun is straight overhead and the commandment is in the room, so whatever darkness this is can't come from a shortage of light. I think of a man who has been told where the job is and has the tools in the truck and still can't find the site, which I recognize from the inside more than I'd like.

Verse 7 is easy to lose between the two verses that matter more. It says the Lord had also given a commandment "that you should call your solemn assembly, that your fastings and your mourning might come up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." So the house wasn't the only instruction on the table, and the verse reads to me like a man tallying what he asked for and what came back.

Verse 10 mentions "contentions" in the school of the prophets. The text says they arose, that they were "very grievous unto me," and that the Lord sent his servants out "to be chastened." It doesn't say who argued with whom or about what, and nothing I've read settles it.

What was the house supposed to do?

Verse 4 says the house prepares the apostles "to prune my vineyard for the last time." Verse 8 says the Lord means to "endow those whom I have chosen with power from on high." Verse 9 tells them to tarry "even as mine apostles at Jerusalem," which puts the whole thing in the upper room before Pentecost. They were being asked to wait in a building that didn't exist yet.

Care is needed with the word endow, because what it meant in Kirtland in 1833 isn't the temple ordinance Latter-day Saints mean by the word now, which Joseph Smith introduced in Nauvoo in May 1842. That is about nine years after this revelation. Reading the later thing back into verse 8 muddies what the Saints in Kirtland were actually told to wait for.

After that the details arrive, starting with the house not being built "after the manner of the world" (verse 13) and the pattern being shown to three men the Saints will appoint (verse 14). Verse 15 gives the inner court at fifty-five feet wide and sixty-five feet long. The lower part is for "your sacrament offering, and for your preaching, and your fasting, and your praying, and the offering up of your most holy desires" (verse 16), and the higher part is for "the school of mine apostles" (verse 17). Three of the chapter's seventeen verses go to one particular room, which is a lot of the chapter to spend on a room.

How fast did they move?

Fast, once the word came.

The building committee wrote a letter that same day saying the commandment was "as important as our salvation." Ground was broken on June 5, four days after the revelation. Hyrum Smith and Reynolds Cahoon dug the first of the foundation trench by hand, and George A. Smith hauled the first wagon of stone. The temple took about three years to finish and was dedicated in 1836.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is "very grievous sin" as harsh as it sounds?

The phrase turns up three times, in verses 3, 6 and 10, and each time it names a different group. The first is the Saints who hadn't considered the house. The second is the ordained who weren't chosen. The third is the servants in the school of the prophets. I wouldn't call any of the three a gentle scolding, though verse 1 frames all of it as love.

Is the "endowment of power" in verse 8 the Nauvoo endowment?

As far as I can tell it isn't, since in 1833 the word points to the outpouring and the keys the leaders were waiting for, and the ordinance Latter-day Saints receive in temples today came with Nauvoo. If you want to see how the Kirtland version looked in practice, the accounts from the 1836 dedication are the place to go, and the language in them will sound unfamiliar.

What were the contentions in the school of the prophets?

The chapter doesn't say. Verse 10 reports that contentions arose and were very grievous to the Lord, and then the sentence moves on. I've read guesses and I'd keep them as guesses.

Why does the Lord give measurements for a building?

Verse 13 says it isn't to be built after the manner of the world, and verse 15 then gives fifty-five feet by sixty-five. My own reading is that a commandment with dimensions is harder to put off than one with a mood, since you can't postpone a measurement without somebody noticing it's still on paper.

Tomorrow after church I'm going to read verses 13 through 17 again with a floor plan of the Kirtland Temple open next to them, and see which room is which. D&C 96 comes next, and I'd like the building clear in my head before it does.

— D.